Matthew Sandfrey

Game Overview

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A 3D online multiplayer party game composed of many minigames where players compete to be the best. This game was in Unity with C# as well as Cinemachine, Zenject, Photon Fusion, and WWise

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Contributions

• By using Photon Fusion, successfully moved the game to network multiplayer

• Networked all objects and players so actions are properly shared across network

• Created managers for flow of game and minigames as well as win conditions

• Built player framework and implemented abilities and handling of input

 

Project Goal

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We wanted to make a game with various minigames (around as many as Fall Guys as a start), with up to 8 people, with a cosmetic and level up system. 

The game we created with was smaller in scope but was a good starting line. 20 different levels, 4 players online, with the framework for the cosmetic store in place but no actual cosmetic functionality.

Unfortunately, we were unable to find a publisher before funding ran out and we have for the time being disbanded until a later time.

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Issues

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• Photon Fusion

• Grapple

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I was tasked with the monumental task of taking our local multiplayer game that was still being updated, and implement online multiplayer. The first challenge was trying to understand how to use Photon Fusion. With little documentation and few tutorials to work with, it took some time to understand. Even ChatGPT couldn't help with my questions because the software came out right before its knowledge cutoff. 

Once I figured it out, it then became difficult to know where to start migrating our game into the networked atmosphere. Slowly but surely, object by object, scene by scene, I was able to network the game and eventually have our weekly playtests be done together over the network. 

It then became a problem of diving into Fusion to figure the best way to deal with lag and how to optimize the game for the network. I paired with the lead programmer to find solutions for this and we eventually got the game into a state that was more acceptable.

The movement aspect of the game was based on a grappling(grapple hook) system and we reworked it 3 separate times to get the feel right. It was then a pain in the ass to network as it did not want to cooperate at all.

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As the game has not been released and I no longer have access to the project, I can only link to Left Turn Studios if you would like to talk with them about my time there.